Classroom Phone Bans Work. So Why Don’t All Schools Do It?

Gift link. The answer is eight paragraphs in:

> Parents who had grown accustomed to being able to reach their kids at any moment pushed back when some districts proposed phone bans. Many schools that had phone-free policies left enforcement to the teachers, leading to a patchwork of practices. Some teachers quit after growing exhausted from policing devices.

> It wasn’t until states began mandating school districts to develop phone policies that more uniform enforcement began. As of this past month, 37 states have enacted some kind of school phone law or policy.

> In California, the 2024 Phone-Free Schools Act mandated that districts have until July 2026 to develop policies limiting student phone use. Many districts have determined it isn’t enough to expect students to keep their phones in lockers or backpacks. Some districts require students to lock up their phones in Yondr pouches during the day. Sierra Sands introduced pouches from Generation Faraday that block wireless signals.

> […]

> Two economics researchers studied a large district in Florida, the first state to implement a statewide school phone policy in 2023. The district, which wasn’t named in the paper, saw an increase in student suspensions in the ban’s first year. The researchers attribute this to students being disciplined for using phones when they weren’t supposed to. The disciplinary issues have since dropped to pre-phone ban levels, and unexcused absences have decreased.

One reader’s comment after the article:

> It’s well known in the tech world that tech execs do not allow their kids to have screens or social media. You think they know something? We have to teach our children to be creators, not consumers. No kid should have a smart phone. Call and text only phones are readily available and cheap.

I expect there’s going to be a mix of teachers that don’t really care & rebellious students who also don’t care & will just use their phones anyway thus further proving banning stuff like this doesn’t always work. Back in my high school days we had a phones off policy during class but people rarely actually followed it & teachers rarely enforced it. People still texted during class & played tetris on their phones if they weren’t doing the class work.

Blame the parents

Parents expect to be able to contact their kids at any time. Until that expectation is gone they’ll demand phones be on their kids at all times. Hell, some parents even track their kids locations with their phones. Sure school shootings and kidnappings exist, but they are rare. But parents these days are paranoid as fuck. I miss the 90s when the idea of always being in contact wasn’t an expectation. 

Speaking as a Millennial, there needs to be a study on Gen X/Millenials as parents because what the fuck are y’all doing with your kids, or lack thereof?

The iPad generation became a thing because of lazy and self important parents, not the kids buying kit themselves.

Then we’ll be admitting to a 100% self inflicted 1st world problem.

Because they’re not allowed to tell parents to fuck off.

Do they though. It is extremely easy to claim a ban is working but most evidence for it is circumstantial and anecdotal by people who are probably biased against cellphones in the classroom before.

I’m going to date myself. 

When I was in high school (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), I had a cellphone. It was a forbidden device. Only drug dealers had cellphones. 

I got caught by my English teacher. He said, “I think you should keep those kinds of “calculators” at home.”  He knew, and I knew he knew. 

I wasn’t dealing, I was a Good(tm) student. But it kept me from ever having it seen or heard again. 

Kids can have phones(for lots of reasons), but not to be seen or heard at school. 

Parents. Parents these days are weak and pathetic.

My whole state implemented it this year, taking it out of the school and teachers hands. There was a lot of grumbling and whining from parents when it first started, but it’s actually been pretty great.

Am I the only one who remembers phones not being allowed in class like always being a thing? When I was in school if they caught you with your phone in class or otherwise the teacher would confiscate it until the end of the day. Also after multiple offenses you got Saturday detention

I mean all you need to do is look at almost any Reddit post about this.

A lot of people are supportive of a ban of some kind (full or partial), but plenty of people also chime in with “But they need them. School is boring, yo,” or some bullshit. So many Redditors think that they were **that** kid. That kid which schools failed. If only schools cared more. If only their teachers cared more. They would’ve *done something* with their lives.

Well, now we know with about a years worth of data that banning phones does seem to actually help things. The first year is rough because everyone needs to get used to it i.e. students acting out, parents fighting back, and teachers not quite sure how to properly implement punitive measures. Once you get over that hurdle things get better.

And of course, I always go back to asking the age old question of people that say “School is broken” and just ask “Well, how the fuck would you fix it then?” Because I don’t think most people understand just how enormous the public education system is in the U.S.

And if you want to try to point to systems like those in Scandinavian countries then how about you actually look into what they do? Because odds are you’ll realize just why we’ll never even be able to reach a **compromise** with our current political system in the U.S.

Edit: O’, and cannot forget the people that demand that *teachers* also have their phones banned. Because apparently teachers are the exact same as students. And research, for the past decade, has shown that *teachers* having their phones out are the issue. Never mind that so many of us have to use our phones just to authenticate our login for our email, the grade book, to take attendance, etc.

Universal healthcare works. So why doesn’t only one wealthy nation do it?

I’ll give you one hint, it rhymes Republicans and their donors

I blame the spineless and incompetent administrators. At my previous school (a charter school), every time I suggested banning phones the excuse that I got from my principal and assistant principal was “how are parents going to know when to pick up their kids?” My response was always: “the same way we all did it when we were kids back in the 80’s and 90’s. The kids and parents get a paper copy of the daily schedule (literally the exact same every single day) and they arrange to meet at an arranged time and place. E.g. by the fire hydrant outside of the school 5 minutes after the last class is scheduled to end.”

Come on people. It really is not that difficult. Grow a pair of balls (or ovaries) and do what we all know needs to be done.

In HS they don’t work. I know this because I see it with my own eyes. No teacher can see if all 30+ students aren’t on their phone.